Sprinkled in our conversation was his time as a sniper. Here he talks about how that work breaks down:

xKGB: “Kremlin” operation I was working alone - we can talk about it more. Sniper goes into 4 categories: first, military sniper - he works with a partner, who’s looking for the targets using optics.

Woman are the best snipers (they usually have lower blood pressure than man and they pay more attention to details. In Chechnya, Russian small Muslim republic where terrorists fight for independence since 1993, they pay women -snipers (soldiers of fortune) from former Soviet Baltic republics (Litva, Estonia) to fight Russian army. Every woman has 2 helpers - they count the dead bodies and keep an eye on the sniper.

Then there are mafia snipers - work mostly as a team. Next are espionage (gov) agency snipers - might be a solo, might be a team, depends. Last are “lonely wolves” - psychos who just shoot people in the street through a hole in a van, from the roof, etc.”

Then noticing we aren’t talking about him anymore, he redirects and with the driest of all humor, and half truths, he says, “I prefer to work alone.”

Above: Female Russian sniper [via]